Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Today, Microsoft has released its monthly set of security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been identified and addressed in various products. This month's advisory release addresses 34 new vulnerabilities with 21 of them rated critical and 13 of them rated important. These vulnerabilities impact Edge, Exchange, Internet Explorer, Office, Scripting Engine, Windows, and more.

In addition to the 33 vulnerabilities addressed, Microsoft has also released an update for Microsoft Office which improves security by disabling the Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) protocol. This update is detailed in ADV170021 and impacts all supported versions of Office. Organizations who are unable to install this update should consult the advisory for workaround that help mitigate DDE exploitation attempts.

Friday, December 8, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between December 01 and December 08. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Overview

Talos has discovered a remote code execution vulnerability in the ACDSee Ultimate 10 application from ACD Systems International Inc. Exploiting this vulnerabilities can potentially allow an attacker to gain full control over the victim's machine. If an attacker builds a specially crafted .PSD (Photoshop) file and the victim opens it with the ACDSee Ultimate 10 application, the attackers code could potentially be executed with the privileges of the local user.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

This blog post is authored by James Spadaro of Cisco ASIG and Lilith Wyatt of Cisco Talos.

Imagine a scenario where you, as a vulnerability researcher, are tasked with auditing a network application to identify vulnerabilities. By itself, the task may not seem too daunting until you learn of a couple conditions and constraints: you have very little information to work off of on how the network applications operates, how the protocols work, and you have a limited amount of time to conduct your evaluation. What do you do?

In these scenarios, searching for and identifying vulnerabilities in network applications can be a monumental task. Fuzzing is one testing method that researchers may use in these cases to test software and find vulnerabilities in an efficient manner. However, the question that then comes up is how does one fuzz quickly and effectively?

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Overview

This report shows how to deobfuscate a custom .NET ConfuserEx protected
malware. We identified this recent malware campaign in our Advanced
Malware Protection (AMP) telemetry. Initial infection is via a malicious
Word document, the malware ultimately executes in memory an embedded
payload from the Recam family. Recam is an information stealer. Although
the malware has been around for the past few years, there's a reason
you won't see a significant amount of documentation concerning its
internals. The authors have gone the extra mile to delay analysis of the
sample, including multiple layers of data encryption, string
obfuscation, piecewise nulling, and data buffer constructors. It also
relies on its own C2 binary protocol which is heavily encrypted along
with any relevant data before transmission.

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Introduction

In 2016 Talos released an advisory for CVE-2016-2334, which was a remote code execution vulnerability affecting certain versions of 7zip, a popular compression utility. In this blog post we will walk through the process of weaponizing this vulnerability and creating a fully working exploit that leverages it on Windows 7 x86 with the affected version of 7zip (x86 15.05 beta) installed.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Executive Summary

Earlier this year, Talos published 2 articles concerning South Korean threats. The first one was about the use of a malicious HWP document which dropped downloaders used to retrieve malicious payloads on several compromised websites. One of the website was a compromised government website. We named this case "Evil New Years". The second one was about the analysis and discovery of the ROKRAT malware.

This month, Talos discovered a new ROKRAT version. This version contains technical elements that link the two previous articles. This new sample contains code from the two publications earlier this year:

It contains the same reconnaissance code used;

Similar PDB pattern that the "Evil New Years" samples used;

it contains the same cloud features and similar copy-paste methods that ROKRAT used;

It uses cloud platform as C&C but not exactly the same. This version uses pcloud, box, dropbox and yandex.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Talos has won this year's 5th Volatility plugin contest with Pyrebox. Volatility is a well-known open-source framework designed to analyze operating system memory. The framework has existed since 2007. For the previous 5 years they have run a plugin contest to find the most innovative, interesting, and useful extensions for the Volatility framework. Pyrebox is an open-source Python scriptable Reverse Engineering sandbox developed by Talos. Based on QEMU, its goal is to aid reverse engineering by providing dynamic analysis and debugging capabilities from a different perspective. In this context, Pyrebox is able to interact with Volatility in order to collect information from the memory of the analysed system.

EP17 Show Notes:

Matt hijacks the Roundtable to tell us which Spice Girl each host is, because where else does a PR gimmick from KFC lead? Also, what’s worse than clicking a search result and getting a slideshow listicle? Getting a trojan payload when searching for banking forms (but that is the only thing that is worse - ARE YOU LISTENING BUZZFEED?). We also discuss the misnaming of troll farms and how patching and proper network segmentation are your friends - unlike anyone who publishes clickbait slideshows - STILL LOOKING AT YOU, BUZZFEED)

For your consideration - Did Joel intentionally break the uploader to delay the episode by several days? Why would he do such a thing? Discuss.

Make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher to make sure you don't miss an episode!

Monday, November 20, 2017

As the Internet of Things gains steam and continues to develop, so are adversaries and the threats affecting these systems. Companies throughout the world are busy deploying low cost Internet-connected computing devices (aka the Internet of Things) to solve business problems and improve our lives. In tandem, criminals are developing their methods for abusing and compromising vulnerable and poorly defended IoT devices.

Friday, November 17, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between November 10 and November 17. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Overview

libxls is a C library supported on Windows, Mac and Linux which can read Microsoft Excel File Format (XLS) files ranging from current versions of XLS files down to Excel 97 (BIFF8) formats.

The library is used by the `readxl` package which can be installed in the R programming language via the CRAN repository. The library is also part of the ‘xls2csv’ tool. The library can also be used to successfully parse Microsoft XLS files.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Microsoft has released its monthly set of security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been identified and addressed in various products. This month's advisory release addresses 53 new vulnerabilities with 19 of them rated critical, 31 of them rated important and 3 of them rated moderate. These vulnerabilities impact Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Scripting Engine, and more.

In addition, an update for Adobe Reader was released which addresses CVE-2017-16367 / TALOS-2017-0356 - Adobe Acrobat Reader DC PDF Structured Hierarchy ActualText Structure Element Code Execution Vulnerability which was discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos. This vulnerability manifests as a type confusion vulnerability in the PDF parsing functionality for documents containing marked structure elements. A specifically crafted PDF document designed to trigger the vulnerability could cause an out-of-bounds access on the heap, potentially leading to arbitrary code execution. More details regarding this vulnerability are available here.

Monday, November 13, 2017

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Claudio Bozzato of Cisco Talos.

Executive Summary

The Foscam C1 Indoor HD Camera is a network-based camera that is marketed for use in a variety of applications, including use as a home security monitoring device. Talos recently identified several vulnerabilities present in these devices, and worked with Foscam to develop fixes for them, which we published the details for in a blog post here. In continuing our security assessment of these devices, Talos has discovered additional vulnerabilities. In accordance with our responsible disclosure policy, Talos has worked with Foscam to ensure that these issues are resolved and that a firmware update is made available for affected customers. These vulnerabilities could be leveraged by an attacker to achieve remote code execution on affected devices, as well as upload rogue firmware images to the devices, which could result in an attacker being able to completely take control of the devices.

EP16 Show Notes:

The crew takes on Apache OpenOffice vulns and when you need one CVE versus one hundred. We spend a lot of time discussing signal to noise ratio and Twitter canaries getting things wrong. Of course, we also discuss Bad Rabbit, its relationship to Nyetya, and why OpenOffice vulns are a worry, even to businesses that are run like hippie communes. As per usual, we mostly just make bad jokes.

Mitch also fails miserably at uploading podcasts to the website, making people work at midnight. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher to make sure you don't miss an episode!

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Summary

It has become common for users to use Google to find information that they do not know. In a quick Google search you can find practically anything you need to know. Links returned by a Google search, however, are not guaranteed to be safe. In this situation, the threat actors decided to take advantage of this behavior by using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make their malicious links more prevalent in the search results, enabling them to target users with the Zeus Panda banking Trojan. By poisoning the search results for specific banking related keywords, the attackers were able to effectively target specific users in a novel fashion.

By targeting primarily financial-related keyword searches and ensuring that their malicious results are displayed, the attacker can attempt to maximize the conversion rate of their infections as they can be confident that infected users will be regularly using various financial platforms and thus will enable the attacker to quickly obtain credentials, banking and credit card information, etc. The overall configuration and operation of the infrastructure used to distribute this malware was interesting as it did not rely on distribution methods that Talos regularly sees being used for the distribution of malware. This is another example of how attackers regularly refine and change their techniques and illustrates why ongoing consumption of threat intelligence is essential for ensuring that organizations remain protected against new threats over time.

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Overview

Cisco Talos is disclosing several vulnerabilities identified in Circle with Disney. Circle with Disney is a network device designed to monitor the Internet use of children on a given network. Circle pairs wirelessly, with your home Wi-Fi and allows you to manage every device on the network, tablet, TV, or laptop. It can also pair via ethernet after the initial pairing. Using an iOS or Android app, families create unique profiles for every member of the home and from there, help shape each person's online experience.

The security team at Circle Media has been exemplary to work with from initial vulnerability discovery to release. They have been responsive and open to communication. Additionally, the Circle with Disney was designed such that software updates are pushed down to customer devices when they become available. Customers who have received these updates are protected against these vulnerabilities.

Through these exploitable vulnerabilities a malicious attacker could gain various levels of access and privilege, including the ability to alter network traffic, execute arbitrary remote code, inject commands , install unsigned firmware, accept a different certificate than intended, bypass authentication, escalate privileges, reboot the device, install a persistent backdoor, overwrite files, or even completely brick the device.

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos

Today, Talos is disclosing several vulnerabilities that have been identified in Cesanta Mongoose server.

Cesanta Mongoose is a library implementing a number of networking protocols, including HTTP, MQTT, MDNS and others. It is designed with embedded devices in mind and as such is used in many IoT devices and runs on virtually all popular IoT platforms. The small size of the software enables any Internet-connected device to function as a web server. Mongoose is available under GPL v2 and commercial licenses.
All these discovered vulnerabilities are fixed in version 6.10 of the library.

Friday, October 27, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between October 20 and October 27. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Overview

Today, Talos is releasing details of three new vulnerabilities discovered within Apache OpenOffice application. The first vulnerability, TALOS-2017-0295 within OpenOffice Writer, the second TALOS-2017-0300 in the Draw application, and the third TALOS-2017-0301 discovered in the Writer application. All three vulnerabilities allow arbitrary code execution to be performed.

On October 24, 2017, Cisco Talos was alerted to a widescale ransomware campaign affecting organizations across eastern Europe and Russia. As was the case in previous situations, we quickly mobilized to assess the situation and ensure that customers remain protected from this and other threats as they emerge across the threat landscape.

There have been several large scale ransomware campaigns over the last several months. This appears to have some similarities to Nyetya in that it is also based on Petya ransomware. Major portions of the code appear to have been rewritten. The distribution does not appear to have the sophistication of the supply chain attacks we have seen recently.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Introduction

Cisco Talos discovered a new malicious campaign from the well known actor Group 74 (aka Tsar Team, Sofacy, APT28, Fancy Bear…). Ironically the decoy document is a deceptive flyer relating to the Cyber Conflict U.S. conference. CyCon US is a collaborative effort between the Army Cyber Institute at the United States Military Academy and the NATO Cooperative Cyber Military Academy and the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. Due to the nature of this document, we assume that this campaign targets people with an interest in cyber security. Unlike previous campaigns from this actor, the flyer does not contain an Office exploit or a 0-day, it simply contains a malicious Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro.

The VBA drops and executes a new variant of Seduploader. This reconnaissance malware has been used by Group 74 for years and it is composed of 2 files: a dropper and a payload. The dropper and the payload are quite similar to the previous versions but the author modified some public information such as MUTEX name, obfuscation keys... We assume that these modifications were performed to avoid detection based on public IOCs.

The article describes the malicious document and the Seduploader reconnaissance malware, especially the difference with the previous versions.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Overview

Talos is disclosing a single off-by-one read/write vulnerability found in the TIFF image decoder functionality of PDFium as used in Google Chrome up to and including version 60.0.3112.101. Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser today and a specially crafted PDF could trigger the vulnerability resulting in memory corruption, possible information leak, and potential code execution. This issue has been fixed in Google Chrome version 62.0.3202.62.

EP15 Show Notes:

In this EP, we take on interviewing and finding a job with technical questions and tests (hint: don’t oversell yourself, and make sure your mute button actually works). We also talk about enabling users with security as opposed to hobbling them. When Craig brings up the Google Home Mini beta test issues, he ends up taking a ration over his choices in handling the situation. We also discuss some clever new phishing techniques that insert malware links *mid-conversation* with a trusted party.

Spoiler alert: Joel turns out to be an Apple apologist. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher to make sure you don't miss an episode!

Friday, October 13, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between October 6 and October 13. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Introduction

In the CCleaner 64bit stage 2 previously described in our blog, we explained that the attacker modified a legitimate executable that is part of "Symantec Endpoint". This file is named EFACli64.dll. The modification is performed in the runtime code included by the compiler, more precisely in the __security_init_cookie() function. The attacker modified the last instruction to jump to the malicious code. The well-known IDA Pro disassembler has trouble displaying the modification as we will show later in this post. Finally, we will present a way to identify this kind of modification and the limitation in this approach.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Executive Summary

Cisco Talos previously published research into a targeted attack that leveraged an interesting infection process using DNS TXT records to create a bidirectional command and control (C2) channel. Using this channel, the attackers were able to directly interact with the Windows Command Processor using the contents of DNS TXT record queries and the associated responses generated on the attacker-controlled DNS server.

We have since observed additional attacks leveraging this type of malware attempting to infect several target organizations. These attacks began with a targeted spear phishing email to initiate the malware infections and also leveraged compromised U.S. state government servers to host malicious code used in later stages of the malware infection chain. The spear phishing emails were spoofed to make them appear as if they were sent by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in an attempt to add a level of legitimacy and convince users to open them. The organizations targeted in this latest malware campaign were similar to those targeted during previous DNSMessenger campaigns. These attacks were highly targeted in nature, the use of obfuscation as well as the presence of a complex multi-stage infection process indicates that this is a sophisticated and highly motivated threat actor that is continuing to operate.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Microsoft has released its monthly set of security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been identified and addressed in various products. This month's advisory release addresses 63 new vulnerabilities with 28 of them rated critical and 35 rated important. These vulnerabilities impact Graphics, Edge, Internet Explorer, Office, Sharepoint, Windows Graphic Display Interface, Windows Kernel Mode Drivers, and more.

Today, Talos is disclosing two vulnerabilities that have been identified in the Simple DirectMedia Layer library. Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform development library designed for use in video playback software, emulators, and games by providing low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware. SDL, via its SDL_image library, also has the capability to handle various image formats such as XCF, the default layered image format for GIMP.

An attacker could compromise a user by exploiting one of these vulnerabilities via a specifically crafted file that SDL would handle, such as a XCF file.

Given that numerous applications make use of SDL, Talos has coordinated with the SDL community to disclose these vulnerabilities and ensure that an updated version of the library is available to use.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Today, Talos is releasing details of multiple vulnerabilities discovered within the Computerinsel GmbH PhotoLine image processing software. PhotoLine, developed by Computerinsel GmbH, is a well established raster and vector graphics editor for Windows and Mac OS X that can also be used for desktop publishing.

TALOS-2017-0387 (CVE-2017-2880). TALOS-2017-0427 (CVE-2017-2920), TALOS-2017-0458 (CVE-2017-12106) and TALOS-2017-0459 (CVE-2017-12107) may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code remotely on the vulnerable system when a specially crafted image file is opened by the PhotoLine image processing software.

EP14 Show Notes:

We haven’t gone around the table and introduced ourselves in some time (about 50k downloads ago), so we take the time we usually complain about things at the top of the show to do that.

We have seen a massive amount of “top-tier” threats in the last six months or so. While it might seem like comparing apples and oranges (hint: it is), the crew takes a stab at ranking these recent threats/attacks: CCleaner, Deloitte, Equifax, Nyetya, SEC, Shamoon2, WannaCry. Shockingly, all of us have a different ranking. What’s your list look like?

Regarding response: Consistency matters, don’t be clever. We discuss some recent unbelievably boneheaded things we have seen in security response. More importantly, we discuss how one SHOULD respond to an incident.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between September 22 and September 29. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Introduction

Banking trojans are among some of the biggest threats to everyday users as they directly impact the user in terms of financial loss. Talos recently observed a new campaign specific to South America, namely Brazil. This campaign was focused on various South American banks in an attempt to steal credentials from the user to allow for illicit financial gain for the malicious actors. The campaign Talos analysed focused on Brazilian users and also attempted to remain stealthy by using multiple methods of re-direction in an attempt to infect the victim machine. It also used multiple anti-analysis techniques and the final payload was written in Delphi which is quite unique to the banking trojan landscape.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Executive Summary

Throughout this blog post we will be detailing a newly discovered RTF document family that is being leveraged by the FIN7 group (also known as the Carbanak gang) which is a financially-motivated group targeting the financial, hospitality, and medical industries. This document is used in phishing campaigns to execute a series of scripting languages containing multiple obfuscation mechanisms and advanced techniques to bypass traditional security mechanisms. The document contains messages enticing the user to click on an embedded object that executes scripts which are used to infect the system with an information stealing malware variant. This malware is then used to steal passwords from popular browsers and mail clients which are sent to remote nodes that are accessible to the attackers. These advanced mechanisms and the information stealing malware will be discussed in detail. We will also review a number of static and dynamic detection mechanisms used in the AMP for Endpoints and Threat Grid product lines to detect these document families.

Introduction

Talos recently published a technical analysis of a backdoor which was included with version 5.33 of the CCleaner application. During our investigation we were provided an archive containing files that were stored on the C2 server. Initially, we had concerns about the legitimacy of the files. However, we were able to quickly verify that the files were very likely genuine based upon the web server configuration files and the fact that our research activity was reflected in the contents of the MySQL database included in the archived files.

In analyzing the delivery code from the C2 server, what immediately stands out is a list of organizations, including Cisco, that were specifically targeted through delivery of a second-stage loader. Based on a review of the C2 tracking database, which only covers four days in September, we can confirm that at least 20 victim machines were served specialized secondary payloads. Below is a list of domains the attackers were attempting to target. Not all companies identified in the targets .php file were seen communicating with a secondary C2 or had a secondary payload deployed.

Interestingly the array specified contains Cisco's domain (cisco.com) along with other high-profile technology companies. This would suggest a very focused actor after valuable intellectual property.

These new findings raise our level of concern about these events, as elements of our research point towards a possible unknown, sophisticated actor. These findings also support and reinforce our previous recommendation that those impacted by this supply chain attack should not simply remove the affected version of CCleaner or update to the latest version, but should restore from backups or reimage systems to ensure that they completely remove not only the backdoored version of CCleaner but also any other malware that may be resident on the system.

Beers with Talos is a fast-paced, smart, and humorous podcast focused on security research topics. Staying abreast of security topics is difficult in this rapidly evolving threat landscape. Beers with Talos serves important security stories in a way that is understandable, engaging, and fun to researchers, executives, and security n00bs alike.

EP13 Show Notes:

Struts - when to patch and when to patch with a vengeance. In light of the Equifax breach, we discuss how patching can make you live better days, Never look back and say, Could have been me. Naturally, that convo leads into the biggest story of the week around Pwning the Supply Chain - CCleaner, Python, and Nyetya style. Avast made some mistakes, but every tech company is susceptible to supply chain attacks. What can companies do to protect themselves and how can users adopt a stronger security posture in this area? We also talk Ex$ploit Economy - Valuing exploits by supply and demand. Zerodium has an extensive price list, what can we discern about the availability and difficulty of various exploits using basic economics?

Monday, September 18, 2017

Update 9/18: CCleaner Cloud version 1.07.3191 is also reported to be affectedUpdate 9/19: This issue was discovered and reported by both Morphisec and Cisco in separate in-field cases and reported separately to Avast.

Update 9/19: There has been some confusion on how the DGA domains resolve.

The fallback command and control scheme in use by the CCBkdr involves:
1. Generating a Monthly Domain name (all of which are controlled by Talos for 2017)
2. Request the A records for the domain.
3. 16 bits of the true destination IP are encoded in the first A record, 16 bits are encoded in the second A record
4. The true destination IP is then computed and connected to.
To control the connections Talos has to create two IPs such that they can be fed into the application to resolve to the sinkhole IP.
32 bits of random data were generated. 16 bits of that were combined with 16 bits of the destination address to create the first A record. The remaining 16 random bits were combined with the remaining bits of the destination address to create the second A record.
The resulting two A record IP addresses were then assigned to the DNS configuration.
There was no analysis performed on the selected addresses beyond that they could be combined to create the destination.

Introduction

Supply chain attacks are a very effective way to distribute malicious software into target organizations. This is because with supply chain attacks, the attackers are relying on the trust relationship between a manufacturer or supplier and a customer. This trust relationship is then abused to attack organizations and individuals and may be performed for a number of different reasons. The Nyetya worm that was released into the wild earlier in 2017 showed just how potent these types of attacks can be. Frequently, as with Nyetya, the initial infection vector can remain elusive for quite some time. Luckily with tools like AMP the additional visibility can usually help direct attention to the initial vector.

Talos recently observed a case where the download servers used by software vendor to distribute a legitimate software package were leveraged to deliver malware to unsuspecting victims. For a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner. CCleaner boasted over 2 billion total downloads by November of 2016 with a growth rate of 5 million additional users per week. Given the potential damage that could be caused by a network of infected computers even a tiny fraction of this size we decided to move quickly. On September 13, 2017 Cisco Talos immediately notified Avast of our findings so that they could initiate appropriate response activities. The following sections will discuss the specific details regarding this attack.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between September 08 and September 15. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Beers with Talos is a fast-paced, smart, and humorous podcast focused on security research topics. Staying abreast of security topics is difficult in this rapidly evolving threat landscape. Beers with Talos serves important security stories in a way that is understandable, engaging, and fun to researchers, executives, and security n00bs alike.

EP12 Show Notes:

Matt runs the ship this week in Mitch’s absence. Craig and Nigel are joined by Bill Largent and Joel was… in a meeting? The crew discusses ambulance chasing and crying wolf in the security industry and also what the security press is doing to perpetuate questionable reporting. We also chat at length about what exactly goes into vulnerability discovery, chaining exploits, and the months of work to get to those “12 seconds” of glory at Pwn2Own.

Did we mention the internet ate our last podcast? Sorry about that. We do our best to make up for missing a week this time. But man, that was a great episode you missed…

This post authored by Marcin Noga with contributions from William Largent
Talos discovers and responsibly discloses software vulnerabilities on a regular basis. Occasionally we publish a deep technical analysis of how the vulnerability was discovered or its potential impact. In a previous post Talos took a deep dive into Lexmark Perceptive Document Filters, in this post we are going to focus on another converter used by MarkLogic located in `Converters/cvtpdf` folder, which is responsible for converting pdf to XML-based formats - Argus PDF. This blog will cover the technical aspects including discovery and exploitation process via the Argus PDF converter.

Talos is disclosing the presences of remote code execution vulnerabilities in the processing of Yet Another Markup Language (YAML) content in Ansible Vault and Tablib. Attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities through supplying malicious YAML content to execute arbitrary commands on vulnerable systems.

Overview

YAML is a data serialisation markup format which is designed to be readable for humans yet easily parsed by machines. Many tools and libraries have been developed to parse YAML data. The Python YAML parsing library PyYAML provides two API calls to parse YAML data: yaml.load and yaml.safe_load. The former API does not correctly sanitise YAML input which allows attackers to embed Python code to be executed within YAML content.

Applications which include the PyYAML library and call yaml.load and not yaml.safe_load are vulnerable to remote code execution vulnerabilities.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Overview

LibOFX is an open source implementation of OFX (Open Financial Exchange) an open format used by financial institutions to share financial data with clients. As an implementation of a complex standard, this library is used by financial software such as GnuCash. Talos has discovered an exploitable buffer overflow in the implementation: a specially crafted OFX file can cause a write out of bounds resulting in code execution. This vulnerability is not currently patched and Talos has not received a response from the developers within the period specified by the Vendor Vulnerability Reporting and Disclosure Policy.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Microsoft has released its monthly set of security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been identified and addressed in various products. This month's advisory release addresses 81 new vulnerabilities with 27 of them rated critical, 52 rated important, and 2 rated moderate. These vulnerabilities impact Edge, Hyper-V, Internet Explorer, Office, Remote Desktop Protocol, Sharepoint, Windows Graphic Display Interface, Windows Kernel Mode Drivers, and more. In addition, Microsoft is also releasing an update for Adobe Flash Player embedded in Edge and Internet Explorer.

Note that the Bluetooth vulnerabilities known as "BlueBorne" that affected Windows have been patched in this latest release. For more information, please refer to CVE-2017-8628.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Overview

Talos has discovered two remote code execution vulnerabilities in the the FreeXL library. FreeXL is an open source C library to extract valid data from within an Excel (.xls) spreadsheet. Exploiting these vulnerabilities can potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the victim's machine. If an attacker builds a specially crafted XLS (Excel) file and the victim opens it with an application using the FreeXL library, the attackers code will be executed with the privileges of the local user.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Earlier this week, a critical vulnerability in Apache Struts was publicly disclosed in a security advisory. This new vulnerability, identified as CVE-2017-9805, manifests due to the way the REST plugin uses XStreamHandler with an instance of XStream for deserialization without any type filtering. As a result, a remote, unauthenticated attacker could achieve remote code execution on a host running a vulnerable version of Apache Struts.

This isn't the only vulnerability that has been recently identified in Apache Struts. Earlier this year, Talos responded to a zero-day vulnerability that was under active exploitation in the wild. Talos has observed exploitation activity targeting CVE-2017-9805 in a way that is similar to how CVE-2017-5638 was exploited back in March 2017.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Today, Talos is releasing details of vulnerabilities discovered in Microsoft Edge browser as well as older versions of Google Chrome (CVE-2017-5033) and browsers based on the Webkit such as Apple Safari (CVE-2017-2419) . An attacker may be able to exploit the vulnerabilities and bypass the Content Security Policy set by the server which may lead to disclosure of confidential information. Microsoft stated that this is by design and has declined to patch this issue.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Overview

Free software often downloaded from large freeware distribution sites is a boon for the internet, providing users with functionality that otherwise they would not be able to use. Often users, happy that they are getting something free, fail to pay attention to the hints in the licence agreement that they are receiving additional software services bundled with the freeware they desire.
Graftor aka LoadMoney adware dropper is a potentially unwanted program often installed as part of freeware software installers. We wanted to investigate the effects this software has on a user’s system. According to the analysis performed in our sandbox, Graftor and the associated affiliate files it downloads perform the following functions:

Hijacks the user's browser and injects advertising banners

Installs other potentially unwanted applications from partners like mail.ru

It does not ask the user, it just silently installs these programs

Random web page text is turned into links

Adds Desktop and Browser Quick Launch links

User’s homepage is changed

User’s search provider is changed

Partner adware is executed and it social engineers the user to install further software

Friday, September 1, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between August 25 and September 1. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your FireSIGHT Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

The Prequel

In March 2017, Microsoft released a security update for various versions of Windows, which addressed a remote code execution vulnerability affecting a protocol called SMBv1 (MS17-010). As this vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to completely compromise an affected system, the vulnerability was rated "Critical" with organizations being advised to implement the security update. Additionally, Microsoft released workaround guidance for removing this vulnerability in environments that were unable to apply the security update directly. At the same time, Cisco released coverage to ensure that customers remained protected.

The following month, April 2017, a group publishing under the moniker "TheShadowBrokers" publicly released several exploits on the internet. These exploits targeted various vulnerabilities including those that were addressed by MS17-010 a month earlier. As is always the case, whenever new exploit code is released into the wild, it becomes a focus of research for both the information security industry as well as cybercriminals. While the good guys take information and use it for the greater good by improving security, cybercriminals also take the code and attempt to find ways to leverage it to achieve their objectives, whether that be financial gain, to create disruption, etc.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Overview

Today, Talos is disclosing the discovery of two remote code execution vulnerabilities which have been identified in the Gdk-Pixbuf Toolkit. This toolkit used in multiple desktop applications including Chromium, Firefox, GNOME thumbnailer, VLC and others. Exploiting this vulnerability allows an attacker to gain full control over the victim's machine. If an attacker builds a specially crafted TIFF or JPEG image and entices the victim to open it, the attackers code will be executed with the privileges of the local user.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Update: 9/1/17 - National Instruments has published the following advisory

Overview

LabVIEW is a system design and development platform released by National Instruments. The software is widely used to create applications for data acquisition, instrument control and industrial automation. Talos is disclosing the presence of a potential code execution vulnerability which can be triggered by opening specially crafted VI files, the proprietary file format used by LabVIEW.

Beers with Talos is a fast-paced, smart, and humorous podcast focused on security research topics. Staying abreast of security topics is difficult in this rapidly evolving threat landscape. Beers with Talos serves important security stories in a way that is understandable, engaging, and fun to researchers, executives, and security n00bs alike.

EP11 Show Notes:

Better late than never? On top of being distributed all around the planet this week, we had some technical issues with our recording platform that created a nice audio jigsaw puzzle to solve. Matt’s audio remained a challenge; it is rough this week. Bear with us, the audio quality will be back to what you have come to expect next episode. If you would like to speak to the manager, please hold.

The last several years have seen a continuing surge in booters, DDOS, and combined exploit campaigns for-hire coming out of Asia and other regions. What does this tell us about the continued “professionalization” of the cyber criminal enterprise? What happens now that the playing field is leveled and launching these attacks requires nothing more than a few hundred USD in cryptocurrency?

Monday, August 28, 2017

Overview

Talos is disclosing a pair of code execution vulnerabilities in Lexmark Perceptive Document Filters. Perceptive Document Filters are a series of libraries that are used to parse massive amounts of different types of file formats for multiple purposes. Talos has previously discussed in detail these filters and how they operate. The software update to resolve these vulnerabilities can be found here.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between August 11 and August 18. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your FireSIGHT Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

In the past few months, Talos has observed an uptick in the number of Chinese websites offering online DDoS services. Many of these websites have a nearly identical layout and design, offering a simple interface in which the user selects a target’s host, port, attack method, and duration of attack. In addition, the majority of these sites have been registered within the past six months. However, the websites operate under different group names and have different registrants. In addition, Talos has observed administrators of these websites launching attacks on one another. Talos sought to research the actors responsible for creating these platforms and analyze why they have become more prevalent lately.

In this blog post, we will begin by looking at the DDoS industry in China and charting the shift toward online DDoS platforms. Then we will examine the types of DDoS platforms created recently, noting their similarities and differences. Finally, we will look into the source code likely responsible for the recent increase in these nearly identical DDoS websites.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Introduction

Since public disclosure in April 2017, CVE-2017-0199 has been frequently used within malicious Office documents. The vulnerability allows attackers to include Ole2Link objects within RTF documents to launch remote code when HTA applications are opened and parsed by Microsoft Word.

In this recent campaign, attackers combined CVE-2017-0199 exploitation with an earlier exploit, CVE-2012-0158, possibly in an attempt to evade user prompts by Word, or to arrive at code execution via a different mechanism. Potentially, this was just a test run in order to test a new concept. In any case, the attackers made mistakes which caused the attack to be a lot less effective than it could have been.

Analysis of the payload highlights the potential for the Ole2Link exploit to launch other document types, and also demonstrates a lack of rigorous testing procedures by at least one threat actor.

Attackers are obviously trying to find a way around known warning mechanisms alerting users about potential security issues with opened documents. In this blog post we analyse what happens when an attack attempts to combine these two exploits in a single infection chain and fails.

Although this attack was unsuccessful it has shown a level of experimentation by attackers seeking to use CVE-2017-0199 as a means to launch additional weaponized file types and avoid user prompts. It may have been an experiment that didn’t quite work out, or it may be indication of future attacks yet to materialise.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Introduction

JavaScript is frequently used by malware authors to execute malicious code on Windows systems because it is powerful, natively available and rarely disabled. Our previous article on .NET analysis generated much interest relating to how to use WinDBG to analyse .js files. In this post we extend our description of using WinDBG to describe the analysis of JavaScript using the 64 bit version of wscript.exe. It is strongly recommended to read our previous article first.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Microsoft has released its monthly set of security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been identified and addressed in various products. This month's advisory release addresses 48 new vulnerabilities with 25 of them rated critical, 21 rated important, and 2 rated moderate. These vulnerabilities impact Edge, Hyper-V, Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop Protocol, Sharepoint, SQL Server, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and more. In addition, Microsoft is also releasing an update for Adobe Flash Player embedded in Edge and Internet Explorer.

Parser vulnerabilities in common software packages such as Adobe Acrobat Reader pose a significant security risk to large portions of the internet. The fact that these software packages typically have a large footprints often gives attackers a broad attack surface they can potentially leverage for malicious purposes. Thus, identifying vulnerabilities and responsibly disclosing them is critical to eliminating attack vectors that may otherwise be exploited.

Today, Talos is disclosing a vulnerability that has been identified in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. The vulnerability, if exploited, could lead to arbitrary code execution on affected devices. As part of the coordinated effort to responsibly disclose the vulnerability, Adobe has released a software update that addresses the vulnerability. Additionally, Talos has developed Snort rules that detect attempts to exploit the flaw.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Typically, Talos has the luxury of time when conducting research. We can carefully draft a report that clearly lays out the evidence and leads the reader to a clear understanding of our well supported findings. A great deal of time is spent ensuring that the correct words and logical paths are used so that we are both absolutely clear and absolutely correct. Frequently, the goal is to inform and educate readers about specific threats or techniques.

There are times, however, when we are documenting our research in something very close to real-time. The recent WannaCry and Nyetya events are excellent examples of this. Our goal changes here, as does our process. Here we are racing the clock to get accurate, impactful, and actionable information to help customers react even while new information is coming in.

In these situations, and in certain other kinds of investigations, it is necessary for us to talk about something when we aren’t 100% certain we are correct. I’ll provide two examples from our Nyetya blog posts:

Friday, August 4, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 28 and August 04. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your FireSIGHT Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Today, Talos is disclosing multiple vulnerabilities that have been identified in the Kakadu JPEG 2000 SDK. The vulnerabilities manifest in a way that could be exploited if a user opens a specifically crafted JPEG 2000 file. Talos has coordinated with Kakadu to ensure relevant details regarding the vulnerabilities have been shared. In addition, Talos has developed Snort Rules that can detect attempts to exploit these flaws.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Executive Summary

In March, Talos reported on the details of Crypt0l0cker based on an extensive analysis I carried out on the sample binaries. Binaries -- plural -- because, as noted in the original blog, the Crypt0l0cker payload leveraged numerous executable files which shared the same codebase. Those executables had nearly identical functions in each, but identifying all of those functions repeatedly is tedious and draws time away from improving the analysis. Enter FIRST, the Function Identification and Recovery Signature Tool released by Talos in December 2016.

FIRST allowed me to port my analysis from the unpacking dll to the payload file instantly. Once I was satisfied my analysis across both files, I was then handed a suspected previous version of the sample. FIRST was able to identify similar code across the versions and partially port the analysis back to the older file. When the next version of Crypt0l0cker comes out, I will be able to get a jump on my analysis by using FIRST to port that work forward to the similar code. You can use it to port my work to your sample as well. I will demonstrate doing just that with a Crypt0l0cker sample which appeared on VirusTotal in April 2017, more than a month after the Talos blog about it. There has been no targeted analysis of this file to provide background for this post.

Locating the Sample

Procuring a malware sample of a known family without analyzing it can feel like a heavy challenge to overcome. Thankfully, Talos can leverage Threat Grid sandbox reports of suspected malware samples that we receive. Such reports can be scanned for family IOCs. Per our previous analysis into Crypt0l0cker, the infection status of that version is stored in a file named ewiwobiz. By searching Cisco Threat Grid telemetry for files which created ewiwobiz, I identified a file which was probably a Crypt0l0cker executable.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Today, Talos is releasing details of a new vulnerability discovered within the EZB Systems UltraISO ISO disk image creator software. TALOS-2017-0342 (CVE-2017-2840) may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code remotely on the vulnerable system when a specially crafted ISO image is opened and parsed by the UltraISO software.

Overview

The vulnerability is present in the EZB Systems UltraISO software, an ISO CD/DVD image file creating/editing/converting tool and a bootable CD/DVD maker. UltraISO can directly edit the CD/DVD image file and extract files and folders from it, as well as directly make ISO files from a CD/DVD-ROM or hard drive.

ISO (9660) disk image format is a file system within a single file. Essentially, it is a binary copy of the file system used by the standard software CD-ROM installation disks. Today, most of the installation disks for popular software and operating systems are distributed using the ISO file format.

Monday, July 24, 2017

Overview

Talos has discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the FreeRDP product. FreeRDP is a free implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) originally developed by Microsoft. RDP allows users to connect remotely to systems so they can be operated from afar. The open source nature of the FreeRDP library means that it is integrated into many commercial remote desktop protocol applications.

We identified a number of vulnerabilities falling into 2 classes:

2 Code Executions;

4 Denials Of Service.

The first category allows code execution on the client side through a specially crafted response from a RDP server. The second category can cause the termination of the FreeRDP client. The vulnerabilities result from weaknesses in the handling of network packets sent from the RDP server. Indeed, the size of the data needed to be parsed is sent from the server without checks on the client side. An attacker can compromise the server or use a man in the middle attack to trigger these vulnerabilities.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 14 and July 21. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Today, Talos is disclosing several vulnerabilities that have been identified in CorelDRAW X8. CorelDRAW X8 is graphics suite used for manipulating raster and vector images and is a common alternative to Adobe Creative Cloud. Several of the vulnerabilities being disclosed today specifically affect PHOTO-PAINT X8, a raster graphics editor. Talos has responsibly disclosed this vulnerability to Corel. Corel has made a software update that addresses this vulnerability available for download.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Today, Talos is disclosing several vulnerabilities that have been identified by Portcullis in various software products. All four vulnerabilities have been responsibly disclosed to each respective developer in order ensure they are addressed. In order better protect our customers, Talos has also developed Snort rules that detect attempts to exploit these vulnerabilities.

Vulnerability Details

TALOS-2017-0313 encompasses multiple SQL injection vulnerabilities in ProcessMarker Enterprise Core 3.0.1.7-community. These vulnerabilities manifest as a result of improperly sanitizing input received in web requests. An attacker who transmits a specifically crafted web request to an affected server with parameters containing SQL injection attacks could trigger this vulnerability. This could allow exfiltration of the database information, user credentials, and in certain configuration access the underlying operating system.

Introduction

.NET is an increasingly important component of the Microsoft ecosystem providing a shared framework for interoperability between different languages and hardware platforms. Many Microsoft tools, such as PowerShell, and other administrative functions rely on the .NET platform for their functionality. Obviously, this makes .NET an enticing language for malware developers too. Hence, malware researchers must also be familiar with the language and have the necessary skills to analyse malicious software that runs on the platform.

Analysis tools such as ILSpy help researchers decompile code from applications, but cannot be used to automate the analysis of many samples. In this article we will examine how to use WinDBG to analyse .NET applications using the SOS extension provided by Microsoft.

This article describes:

How to analyse PowerShell scripts by inserting a breakpoint in the .NET API.

How to easily create a script to automatically unpack .NET samples following analysis of the packer logic.

Additionally, you can download a Python script (based on the WinDBG pykd extension) on our github to automate analysis of .NET. This script will be described in the article too.

Monday, July 17, 2017

In Talos, we are continuously trying to improve our research and threat intelligence capabilities. As a consequence, we not only leverage standard tools for analysis, but we also focus our efforts on innovation, developing our own technology to overcome new challenges. Also, Talos has traditionally supported open-source projects, and has open-sourced many different projects and tools that are currently used as part of our workflow like FIRST and BASS.

In this blogpost we present PyREBox, our Python scriptable Reverse Engineering sandbox. PyREBox is based on QEMU, and its goal is to aid reverse engineering by providing dynamic analysis and debugging capabilities from a different perspective. PyREBox allows to inspect a running QEMU VM, modify its memory or registers, and to instrument its execution with simple Python scripts. QEMU (when working as a whole-system-emulator) emulates a complete system (CPU, memory, devices...). By using Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) techniques, it does not require to perform any modification into the guest operating system, as it transparently retrieves information from its memory at run-time.

Several academic projects such as DECAF, PANDA, S2E, or AVATAR, have previously leveraged QEMU based instrumentation for reverse engineering tasks. These projects allow to write plugins in C/C++, and implement several advanced features such as dynamic taint analysis, symbolic execution, or even record and replay of execution traces. With PyREBox, we aim to apply this technology focusing on keeping the design simple, and on the usability of the system for threat analysts.

This blog authored by Aleksandar Nikolich and David Maynor with contributions from Nick Biasini

Memcached - Not secure, Not Patched Fast Enough

Recently high profile vulnerabilities in systems were used to unleash several global ransomware attacks that greatly impacted organizations. These types of vulnerabilities were previously patched and could have been addressed by organizations before the attacks commenced. This is just the latest example in a long line of threats that are successful in large part because of the inability for patches to be applied in a timely and effective manner. In late 2016 Talos disclosed a series of vulnerabilities in a software platform called Memcached. After releasing the vulnerabilities Talos has been monitoring the amount of systems that were vulnerable as well as the rate at which they have been patched. This blog will give a quick overview of the vulnerabilities and discuss the unfortunate findings of the Internet wide scans that we have been conducting over the last six months.

Today, Talos is disclosing a vulnerability that has been identified in Iceni Infix PDF Editor that could lead to arbitrary code execution on affected hosts. This vulnerability manifests in a way that could be exploited if a user opens a specifically crafted PDF file that triggers this flaw. Talos has coordinated with Iceni to ensure relevant details regarding the vulnerability have been shared. Iceni has developed a software update that addresses this vulnerability. In addition, Talos has developed Snort Rules that can detect attempts to exploit this flaw.

Friday, July 7, 2017

Executive Summary

Attackers are continually trying to find new ways to target users with malware sent via email. Talos has identified an email-based attack targeting the energy sector, including nuclear power, that puts a new spin on the classic word document attachment phish. Typically, malicious Word documents that are sent as attachments to phishing emails will themselves contain a script or macro that executes malicious code. In this case, there is no malicious code in the attachment itself. The attachment instead tries to download a template file over an SMB connection so that the user's credentials can be silently harvested. In addition, this template file could also potentially be used to download other malicious payloads to the victim's computer.

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between June 30 and July 07. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your FireSIGHT Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Overview

Talos has discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the freedesktop.org Poppler PDF library. Exploiting these vulnerabilities can allow an attacker to gain full control over the victim's machine. If an attacker builds a specially crafted PDF document and the victim opens it, the attackers code will be executed with the privileges of the local user.

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Executive Summary

We recently wrote about the KONNI Remote Access Trojan (RAT) which has been distributed by a small number of campaigns over the past 3 years. We have identified a new distribution campaign which took place on 4th July. The malware used in this campaign has similar features to that distributed earlier in 2017 with the following changes:

A new decoy document copy/pasted from an article published on the 3rd of July by Yonhap News Agency in Korea;

The dropper includes a 64 bit version of KONNI;

A new CC infrastructure consisting of a climbing club website.

North Korea conducted a test missile launch on 3rd July. This campaign appears to be directly related to the launch and the ensuing discussion of North Korean missile technology. This is consistent with previous KONNI distribution campaigns which have also frequently mentioned North Korea.